Nightworld

The House at the End of the Road

MONROE, LONG ISLAND

"You sure these are the directions he gave you?"

Jack stopped Glaeken's old Mercedes in the middle of the road and peered about in the gloomy light. Bill Ryan sat in the passenger seat, a pair of shotguns propped between his knees. The two necklaces and the blade fragments sat between them in a carved wooden box. Bill peered at the hastily scribbled note in his hand.

"Positive," he said.

Jack would have preferred to have Ba along on this trek but he'd possessed neither the heart nor the nerve to ask the big guy to leave Sylvia and the boy again. But Bill seemed different today. There was a odd air of peace about him that Jack found strangely comforting.

"You grew up in Monroe, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but I've never been out here. I don't think I ever knew there was an out here. This is nowhere."

Nowhere. Perfect description, Jack thought. They were in the far northeast corner of Monroe, on a dirt road leading through the heart of a vast salt marsh. To their left, under a low, leaden, overcast sky, Monroe Harbor lay smooth and flat and still and gray as slate. Somewhere dead ahead was the Long Island Sound. Nothing moved. Not an insect, not a bird, not even a breeze to stir the reeds and tall grass lining the road. Like being caught in the middle of a monochrome marshscape.

The only break in the monotony was the file of utility poles marching along the east flank of the road and what looked like an oversized outhouse near the water at its far end.

"That's got to be the place," Bill said.

"Can't be."

"You see any other place around? We're supposed to follow this road out to the house at its end. That's the place. It's got to be."

Jack doubted it but put the Mercedes in gear again and started forward.

"I still say we made a wrong turn somewhere."

As they approached the shack, Jack noticed smoke rising from behind it.

"Whoever he is, he's got a fire going."

"I hope he builds a better fire than he builds a house," Bill said.

"Right. He must be the original crooked man and this must be the original crooked house."

The shack did not seem to have one true upright. The entire one-story structure was canted left, leaning against the peeling propane tank on its flank; its crumbling brick chimney was canted right; and the aerial atop that was canted left again.

But this had to be the place: the house at the end of the road.

An old Torino sat in front. Except for the fire in the back, the place looked deserted.

"You know," Bill said as they neared it, "that's not just a plain old fire in back there. I don't know much about that sort of thing, but it looks to me like he's got some kind of forge going full blast.

As Jack pulled into the small graveled front yard, he noticed that all the screens were ripped and tattered, all the windows smashed—like every other house they'd passed on their way out from the city.

"This doesn't look good."

Bill shrugged. "The fire's going, and Glaeken said…"

"Yeah. Glaeken said."

He parked and took the wooden box with him when he got out. Bill accompanied him to the door. To the right was what appeared to be a small vegetable garden, but nothing was growing. The front door opened before they reached the steps and a grizzled old man glared at them through the remnants of the screen in the upper half of the storm door.

"Took your time getting here, didn't you?"

His shock of gray hair stuck out in all directions. He needed a shave like his stained undershirt needed to be washed—or better yet, tossed out and replaced.

"You're expecting us?" Jack said. How could that be? The phones had been out for days.

"Yeah. You got the metal?"

Bill glanced at the note in his hand. "First we've got to know: Are you George Haskins?"

"'Course I am."

"May we come in?"

"I don't think they'd like that. You see—"

Jack heard a garbled babble from somewhere behind the solid lower half of the storm door. Haskins looked down and spoke toward the floor.

"All right, all right!" he said, then looked up at Jack again and thrust his hand through the opening. "They're real anxious to get started. Gimme the metal."

Jack handed him the box. Haskins pulled it inside and handed it to someone down by his feet.

"There! You happy now? You gonna shut up and leave me alone now? Good!" He looked up at Jack again. "They been driving me crazy waiting for this stuff."

"Who?"

"My tenants. I been spending my nights down in the crawlspace with 'em. They been keepin' the cooters out. If it hadn't—"

More babbling.

"Okay, okay. They say come back in about four hours. If they really rush it, they should be done by then."

Curious, Jack stepped up on the stoop and peeked through the opening. He saw maybe a dozen scurrying forms, like midgets, only they couldn't have been more than a foot-and-a-half tall. And they looked furry.

"What the—"

Haskins moved to block his view.

"Four hours. They'll have it for you then."

"Yeah, but who are 'they'?" Jacked remembered Glaeken mentioning something about "smallfolk."

"My tenants. They been with me nigh on twenty-five years now, just waitin' for this day—'when time is unfurled and we're called by the world,' as they put it. Seems to me like time and ev'rything else is unfurled these days. So go away and come back later. They don't want anyone around while they're workin'. See you later."

He closed the door.

"Four hours," Bill said, looking at his watch as they returned to the car. "It's a little after eleven now. That'll be after dark."

Jack sat behind the wheel, unease gnawing at his stomach. Bill was right. According to the Sapir curve, this morning's sunrise had been the last. After four hours and forty-two minutes of light, the sun would set for the last time at 3:01 p.m. No more day forever after. Only night.

And then there'd be no quarter from the "cooters," as Haskins called them.

"How the hell are we going to get back?" Bill said.

Jack started the car. "Drive. How else?"

He pulled out and headed back down the road, wondering how to kill the time. No point in heading back to the city. Maybe they could find something to do in Monroe.

"What is it with this town?" Jack said.

"Village," Bill said. "North Shore towns like to refer to themselves as villages."

"Fine. Village. But what gives here? Every time I turn around, the name pops up. You're from Monroe, Carol's from Monroe, the Doc, the Nash lady and her boy are from Monroe. And now we're back out here again making a delivery to some old coot with a house full of furry dwarves. Why are we always coming back to Monroe?"

"I've wondered about that myself, and I think I know. Take a right at the end of the road down here and I'll show you."

Bill guided him to a residential neighborhood, to Collier Street. They stopped in front of number 124, a three-bedroom ranch.

"This is where it happened," Bill said, his voice strangely husky as he stared at the house through his side window. "This is where Rasalom re-entered the world more than a quarter-century after Glaeken thought he'd killed him. It was in the house that used to stand on this lot—the original was set afire—that Carol conceived the child whose body was usurped by Rasalom. That single event has left a stain on this town, given it some sort of psychic pheromone that draws odd people and creates a fertile environment for weird and strange occurrences."

"Like those dwarves out in the marsh."

"Right. They must have sensed Rasalom's return, must have known they'd be needed, so they've been camped out there with George Haskins for decades, waiting for their moment. Now it's come. Same with the Dat-tay-vao. It traveled half way around the world to end up in Monroe where it lived for a while in Alan Bulmer, then moved on to Jeffy. From what I can gather, that journey began about the time Rasalom was reconceived."

"So it must have known that it would be needed too."

"So it seems. But there were other occurrences back in that first year, a cluster of hideously deformed children born in November and early December. No one could explain it then, but now I can see that they all must have been conceived around the same time as Rasalom. His very presence in town must have mutated them in embryo." Bill shook his head. "Major tragedies for the families involved but merely warnings of what was to come."

Jack mulled that as Bill guided him through the town, past the high school where he'd been a football star, past the new house built on the site of his family home, burned to the ground a little over five years ago, killing both of his elderly parents.

"I truly believe Rasalom was responsible for that too," he said in a low voice, thick with emotion. He ground a fist into his palm. "So many others—friends, acquaintances, children! My folks, Jim, Lisl, Renny, Nick, and Danny—dear God, Danny! Damn, I've got scores to settle!"

Jack put a hand on Bill's shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

"We'll get the bastard. We'll make him pay."

Sure we will.

They killed time driving around Monroe. The town—village—seemed all but deserted. No bodies lay about. No bodies anywhere. Probably because unlike the bugs, which merely sucked the juices from their victims, the newer, bigger hole-things devoured their kills. Occasionally Jack spotted fearful faces peering at them from darkened rooms through shattered windows. As they cruised the main drag through the remnants of the downtown harbor front area, a gang of lupine scavengers began to approach the car.

Bill lifted one of the Spas-12s and worked the pump.

"I almost hope they try something," he said through thin, tight lips. "I'm feeling real mean at the moment."

At the sight of the shotgun they immediately lost interest and trotted away.

Jack stared at him. "Even you."

"What?"

"It's getting to you. Even you're starting to feel the effects of this craziness, aren't you?"

"And you're not?"

"Nah. I've made my living waiting for guys like that to start something. You're just beginning to browse in the neighborhood where I've spent my adult life."